Terry Pendleton

ARTICLES ABOUT TERRY PENDLETON BY DATE - PAGE 5

Lonnie Smith admits it was his mistake that he failed to score from first on Terry Pendleton's eighth-inning double Sunday in the seventh game of the World Series. A run would likely have given the championship to his Atlanta Braves, who lost 1-0 to the Minnesota Twins in the 10th inning. Smith refused to talk to the media immediately after the loss, but he later told the Philadelphia Inquirer he was faked out by the Twins` infielders. "If I`d taken the time to take one look, that could have been the difference," Smith said.

Timing is everything in baseball, a special game that requires no clock. Consider that in 1987, the Detroit Tigers are attempting one more victory tour with an aging roster. Desperate for a veteran pitcher come August, the Tigers acquire a Doyle Alexander from the Atlanta Braves, who are going nowhere fast. Alexander posts a spiffy 9-0 mark, and the Tigers miraculously seize the American League East title over the Toronto Blue Jays, managed by Jimy Williams. The Blue Jays blow a lead of 3 1/2 games with a week to go. Detroit, however, loses the American League Championship Series to the Minnesota Twins.

Most of the words were the familiar ones spoken by teams that finish second in a World Series. Talk of missed opportunities. Tipped hats. Next year. And there was hurt. Certainly, there was that. "It's tough," said Greg Olson. "We wanted to win so much." But there was, in the clubhouse of the Atlanta Braves after Sunday night's seventh-game loss, another feeling as well-a sense that something special had taken place over the last nine days, and that they had helped make it so. "For a person who knows baseball," Mark Lemke would say, "it can`t get any better than this."

Being a World Series with no stars to start with-save the neckless Kirby Puckett and the necking Jane and Ted-it is only natural that this one would have to create its own. Not that statues of Mark Lemke or Chuck Knoblauch are likely to be bronzed in front of either team's stadium, as Henry Aaron and Joe Niekro are here, but pending the weekend conclusion of all of this, the Lemkes and the Knoblauchs are what we have to go on. David Justice,...

The Atlanta Braves probably will begin Christmas shopping Dec. 24. What's the rush? This is a team that won its division on the season's last Saturday and then went the full seven games to beat Pittsburgh in the National League playoffs. So it goes in the World Series. On Tuesday night, they beat the Minnesota Twins when David Justice slipped past the catcher's tag in the last of the 12th. Justice made it by a good foot. That gave Mark Lemke 11 inches to play with, and he used them all. Lemke actually touched Brian Harper, who had possession of the ball, before slipping across the plate Wednesday night to score the winner in the ninth inning of a 3-2 Game 4 victory in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

A sacrifice fly by Jerry Willard, a pinch-hitter for a pinch-hitter, scored Mark Lemke with two outs in the ninth inning to give the surging Atlanta Braves a 3-2 victory over Minnesota Wednesday night in Game 4 of the World Series. The victory was the second in a row for the Braves and tied this best-of- seven series at two wins for each side. Willard, a third-string catcher and briefly, last season, a member of the White Sox, batted for Francisco Cabrera after Cabrera was announced as a pinch-batter for pitcher Mike Stanton.

It was pretty funny. Jimy Williams, the third-base coach of the Atlanta Braves, was hitting popups to the infield in a Friday night workout arranged specifically for that purpose in the Metrodome. An Atlanta infielder or catcher would call for the ball, circle, spin, then lunge. Sometimes he would catch it. As often, he wouldn`t. It was the roof. The color is off-white. It is the color of a parachute that has been washed too often. The color of the interior of sourdough bread.

Before Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at Three Rivers Stadium, manager Jim Leyland was asked how his Pirates could even consider winning a pennant Wednesday night with Steve Avery on the mound for the Atlanta Braves. "Well," Leyland said, "the kid's due for a bad outing, isn`t he?" Well, the kid with the multimillion-dollar arm and the $110,000 salary didn`t have a bad outing, and the Pirates didn`t win a pennant. They lost 1-0 in another chapter of this splendid playoff that they`ll close the book on Thursday night.

Ron Gant, the Atlanta batting star, went from goat to hero in 11 innings Saturday night as the Braves defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 and surged back into first place in the National League West. Guilty of two misplays in the field in the first three innings and unable to lift the ball out of the infield in four previous at-bats, Gant came through with a two-out, bases-loaded single in the 11th that snapped a 2-2 tie. The victory in a 4-hour-10-minute marathon enabled the Braves to restore their half-game lead over the Dodgers.

It's an individual award, but the pennant race could influence the voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Keep an eye on players from the front-runners. Here are the leading candidates as the race's final month begins: Barry Bonds, Pittsburgh, lf The Pirate outfielder has turned it on the last two months after a slow start, but he isn`t a clear front-runner. He goes into the weekend second in the league with 94 RBIs, fourth with 39 steals and second with a .407 on-base percentage.